On 3 October 2010, Germany paid the final £59 million part of its war reparations as compensation and punishment for the First World War (1914-1918). The original bill set by the Allied victors at the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919 was £22 billion. The debt was not paid during the Hitler era but, after the end of the Second World War, in 1945, West Germany assumed responsibility and settled the bill in 1983. However, in the London Debt Agreement of 1953 there was stipulation that, should Germany ever be reunited, then interest on the multi-million-pound foreign loans taken out in the Weimar era to pay off the reparations bill should be repaid and payments began again in 1996 after German reunification. Thus it has taken over 91 years to clear the debt – the longest reparations bill in history.